When I started work at the YMCA, my boss would occasionally converse with me about how things were going.
He was very good for me, and in fact it’s only in retrospect that I appreciate just how good he was. One of our conversations had to do with how we viewed human beings. My upbringing and indoctrination had lead me to first of all see people as sinners. That was my first port of call. As such it was to be expected that they would behave in sinful ways – after all, that’s what you expect from sinners. It also made things slightly worse for Christians, because we were meant to be former sinners who knew better, but evidently had a hard time living out that way.
At the time my boss challenged my first way of viewing people and stated that this perspective was a negative way of seeing people and may blind me to some wonderful things of which human beings are capable. His contention was that although it was important to consider the sin factor and acknowledge that we all sin, a far more hopeful and constructive approach to people was to remember they were made in the image of God.
He went on to suggest that if we consider people in that way, then our desire as children of God will be to see God in people. Look for the whatever is true or noble, aspect of people, the good in people. See that and glorify God in that and know there is hope for that person that whatever condition they are in, even in the broken, flawed and sinful state, that God still wants them to fulfil their original function in the perspective of the Creator.
I remember clearly hearing my boss make those views, nod my head to acknowledge receipt of this view, and proceed to dismiss it in my mind as not giving sin and its effects the significance it deserved. As time elapsed though and I engaged with more people from the YMCA in various states of very explicit brokenness, it again acted as a mirror to me of who I was and where I was coming from. It also got me to consider again what grace really meant.
It was only after I left the YMCA and moved around elsewhere that the real benefits of that challenge began to be realised. That YMCA period certainly taught me how to love people from any background and in any state. Yet it was much later that the whole seeing people as created in the image of God and the implications of that begun to sink in and affect a lot of the initial ways I engaged with people.
Recently I read Untamed by Alan and Debra Hirsch. They repeat this people-as-created-in-God’s-image primacy, and it was fascinating to come across it again and be reminded just how important and helpful it is to us to see people that way so that there will be no room or desire for condemnation, but a compassion and a zeal for a re-connection to take place between Creator and created. Not only that but a compelling desire to see God in people and celebrate that, rejoice in that, and encourage people in that so they will continue to flourish and hopefully be attracted to remembering the Source of it all.
When you consider what God’s grace has done in your life, and how the Father treats you, it should certainly affect how you see others.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 